TV Quote of the Day (‘Succession,’ on the Law, Politics, and People)

Logan Roy [played by Brian Cox]: “The law? The law is people. And people is politics. And I can handle the people.”—Succession, Season 3, Episode 3, “The Disruption,” original air date Oct. 31, 2021, teleplay by Ted Cohen and Georgia Pritchett, directed by Cathy Yan

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Verdict,’ on Doubt and Faith in Institutions and the Law)

[Frank is giving his summation to the jury]

Frank Galvin [played by Paul Newman]: “You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, ‘Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.’ And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See, those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, ‘Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you.’ IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.” [He sits down]—The Verdict (1972), screenplay by David Mamet and Jay Presson Allen (uncredited), adapted from the novel by Barry Reed, directed by Sidney Lumet

TV Quote of the Day (‘All in the Family,’ on ‘A Station Wagon Filled With Nuns')

[Involved in a minor, non-injury traffic accident, Archie, seized with visions of a sizable settlement, suddenly develops an aching back. Then, with the opposing attorneys in the case in his living room, matters take an unexpected turn.]

Clarence V. Marshall [played by Richard Stahl]: “Now, according to our witnesses...”

Solomon Rabinowitz [played by Salem Ludwig]: “Witnesses? You said nothing to me about witnesses, Mr. Bunker.”

Archie Bunker [played by Carroll O’Connor]: “Oh, the kids, the kids, y'know.”

Rabinowitz: “Oh, yes, the little children in the playground. Hardly admissible.”

Marshall: “Yes, but I'm referring to a station wagon filled with nuns.”

Rabinowitz: “Your witnesses?”

Marshall: “A station wagon filled with nuns.”

[Archie’s face collapses.]

Marshall: “Now, according to them, you were coming out of the parking lot when it happened. Now, do you recall in what direction you were traveling?”

Rabinowitz: “His vehicle was headed north, I believe.”

Marshall: “Yes, but he was traveling south.”

Archie: “Well, I was backing up. Now, what difference could that make?”

Marshall [smiling]: “Well, if you were backing up, you were going the wrong way in a one-way alley.”

Archie [looking helplessly up at Rabinowitz]: “Well, I must have been going forward.”

Marshall: “Not according to our witnesses.”

Rabinowitz [dourly]: “A station wagon filled with nuns.”

Marshall [reading from statement]: “Yes, Sister Maria Yolanda, Sister Catherine, Sister Jeremy, Sister Rosemary, Sister…”

Archie: “All right, all right, all right! Everybody knows they go around in a mob.” [Looks to door, where Rabinowitz is getting his coat.] “Hey, Mr. Rabinowitz, where you goin’? Hey, don’t leave, Mr. Rabinowitz. Listen, don’t be a-scared of this guy. I mean, alongside of you, he’s like a green kid. I mean, you’re a mensch! Get after him!”

Rabinowitz: “There’s an old, old rule of law, Mr. Bunker. They say it dates back before the turn of the century: In a court of law, you can’t beat a station wagon filled with nuns.” —All in the Family, Season 1, Episode 3, “Archie’s Aching Back,” original air date Jan 26, 1971, teleplay by Norman Lear, Stanley Ralph Ross, and Johnny Speight, directed by John Rich 

Quote of the Day (Pericles, on Democracy and Obedience to the Law)

“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And, just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other….We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect.

‘We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.”—Athenian politician and general Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC), funeral oration, quoted by Greek historian and general Thucydides (ca. 460-404 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (1916; revised edition, 1972)

We don’t know word for word what the Athenian leader Pericles said in ancient Greek—there were no speeches written down, let alone recording devices. But Thucydides provided the best sense of the occasion.

Pericles reminded his audience, in this justly famous homage to war dead, of the values present in Athenian democracy. This passage, during a week of headlines about a former American leader who violated his oath of office and “those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break,” is especially worth keeping in mind.

But Thucydides, in narrating events after this zenith of ancient democracy, offered an equally important lesson about the fragility of that state—about how it crumbled following military reverses, the rhetoric of the demagogue Cleon (“the most violent of the citizens” and “by far the most persuasive with the people at that time”), and the corroded values produced by a plague.

One sentence from his essential history, however, rings most powerfully for me in understanding the loud and lamentable defiance of the law that lies behind the ancient and current threat to the transfer of governmental control in a democacy: “It is prestige, fear and self-interest that prevent men giving up power.”

Quote of the Day (John Grisham, on ‘Lack of Authenticity’ in Legal Thrillers)

“You can probably read the first 10 pages of a book about a courtroom drama and tell if the writer is a lawyer or not. There’s some things just come naturally. You just know the terminology, the phraseology, the legal theories, the courtroom procedures. As a lawyer, you just know that kind of stuff, and I get frustrated when I read legal thrillers or legal courtroom dramas written by people who are not lawyers, because you can always tell the lack of authenticity.”—American bestselling legal suspense novelist (and former criminal defense and personal injury lawyer) John Grisham quoted in Adam Liptak, “On Judges, Innocence and Being ‘Review-Proof,” The New York Times, Oct. 18, 2021

The accompanying photo of John Grisham was taken Jan. 25, 2008, by Scott Brenner.

Quote of the Day (Montesquieu, on How States Perish)

“More states have perished by the violation of their moral customs than by the violation of their laws.” — French political theorist Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734), translated by David Lowenthal

This year, if we’re unlucky, we may elect a President who might commit both violations.

This Day in Pop Music History (Jackson Settles Sex-Abuse Suit for $15 Million)

January 25, 1994—Facing screaming tabloid headlines, beset by growing physical and mental instability, Michael Jackson signed a multimillion-dollar agreement to settle a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of a 13-year-old boy who alleged he had been molested at the singer’s Neverland estate two years before. The settlement was a mixed blessing, however: while the 31-page agreement went a long way toward assuring that no criminal indictment would be filed based on any testimony in the civil case and it explicitly stated that Jackson denied any wrongdoing, it raised the question of why, if the charges were untrue, he had not fought harder to save his reputation.

At very least, the allegations made millions of fans question the judgment of the 35-year-old entertainer. These questions would only multiply in the 15 remaining years of his life, as the self-styled “King of Pop” endured further legal troubles and lived out a private life that could only be regarded as bizarre.

For most of his early career, the public had a different view of the star: as the high-voiced child star of Motown’s Jackson 5 who had grown up to become the high-voiced solo act who had created the top-selling album of all time, Thriller and, with the release of “We Are the World,” had earned an equally exalted perch as a philanthropist and advocate on behalf of hunger relief in Africa.

More recently, however, Jackson had told Oprah Winfrey in a televised interview, after years of speculation about his changing appearance, that he suffered from a skin condition and that he had been emotionally abused by his father as a child.

The more recent allegations raised the specter of a troubled star to an entirely different level. Beginning in May 1992, when Jackson met the plaintiff’s stepfather at the car rental business where he worked, the boy had become a regular visitor at the 2,700-acre Neverland Ranch. What had started out as playing video games, riding in golf carts and taking family vacations with the singer had evolved into Jackson inviting him to sharing his bed and open-mouth kissing, fondling and oral sex, according to the allegations. A civil suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in September 1993, asked for unspecified damages for sexual battery, seduction, willful misconduct, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud and negligence against Jackson.

The Jackson camp, alarmed by the legal threat, engaged the services of Johnnie Cochran, who, though not yet famous for representing O.J. Simpson, had already become the go-to guy for stars in jeopardy, having gotten off football legend Jim Brown on a rape charge and former Different Strokes actor Todd Bridges on an attempted murder rap. Yet with Jackson, Cochran and chief assistant Carl Douglas decided not to take the case to trial.

Discussing the case after Jackson’s death (seen here in this post from the Web site “Vindicate MJ”), Douglas, without specifically addressing the reasons for the settlement, noted key events surrounding the singer in the weeks preceding the deal: cancellation of his “Dangerous” tour for health reasons, growing prescription-drug addiction, and Jackson’s fear that returning to the United States would result in his arrest, which according to Douglas, "would have been the death knell to Michael Jackson and his entire world."

Perhaps Cochran and Douglas concluded that the accuser would have a lower threshold of evidence in a civil rather than criminal case, and that an agreement would, in fact, also wipe out the chance of criminal charges emerging at all. They settled on setting up a $15 million trust fund for the accuser with an additional $1.5 million to each of his parents and $5 million for the plaintiff’s attorney, according to a copy of the pact obtained by Court TV’s Diane Dimond.

From the purely legal perspective, the strategy worked: The accuser and his parents not only did not testify in this case but refused to do so 10 years later when Jackson faced a harrowing criminal trial on similar charges with another boy, a cancer victim. But, from a public-relations viewpoint, it was a catastrophe. Or, rather, part of a PR mega-catastrophe. In a piece written for The Huffington Post after the singer’s death, entertainment publicist Kimberly Krautter noted that, whenever colleagues gathered together and challenged each other on how they would handle various PR disasters, “By far the most interesting and stimulating conversations have always been around Michael Jackson.”

The catalogue of “high ick-factor cringe moments of the past 25 years” that Ms. Krautter enumerated is as notable for its length as for what it leaves out: “The mysteriously blanching visage. The nose. Bubbles the Chimp. The hyperbaric chamber. The onstage (and obviously staged) full French kiss with Lisa Marie Presley. The burka-draped Prince and Paris. The dangling of baby Blanket from the balcony. And the ultimate train wreck that was the Martin Bashir interview.”

Only the last item—in which the singer spoke of sharing his bed with young visitors while denying any sexual component to it (“We go to sleep with the fireplace on; I give them hot milk, you know, we have cookies, it's very charming, it's very sweet, it's what the whole world should do")—hints at the enormous legal peril he faced—and, at minimum, his lack of recognition of the boundaries that adults must, by necessity, maintain with children.

At this juncture, it is difficult, if not impossible, to say what transpired between Jackson and these two cases in which formal charges were dropped—or, indeed, of other allegations that have emerged since his death of up to 24 boys molested. (One major objection might be made to this latter claim: If there were so many victims, why was only $35 million needed to silence all of them?) On the one hand, the singer, like so many in the entertainment field, made an inviting target for either crazies, those hoping for a huge financial score, or both—and the white-hot nature of celebrity makes it practically a law that a sensation-seeking news media that loves to take down celebrities they recently elevate also makes it difficult for those figures to find impartial judges of their case.

At the same time, the money and power gained by celebrities enable them to buy off—or strike back against—those who attempt to accuse them of crimes. In the old days, stars could rely on famous fixers such as Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling of MGM to cover up crisis pregnancies, vehicular homicides, even manslaughter. In the day of the entertainer as free agent, that responsibility has devolved upon, for instance, private detectives such as self-described “Sin Eater” Anthony Pellicano, hired by the likes of Kevin Costner, Farrar Fawcett, Stevie Wonder, Rosanne and James Woods (and Bill Clinton) to make problems go away. 

Pellicano’s career came to a crashing end following his 2008 conviction on 78 counts of wiretapping,  racketeering and wire fraud. As it happened, he worked for a while on the Jackson case, meeting privately for an hour with the accuser—and, some have claimed, frightening staffers at Jackson’s household about going to the police.  

Nearly 20 years later, his jailhouse statement about the entertainer was cryptic but intriguing. He had only worked briefly for Jackson, he said, because he had “found out some truths. He (Jackson) did something far worse to young boys than molest them.”

A February 1994 PBS Frontline documentary about the Jackson media feeding frenzy was entitled, aptly enough, “Tabloid Truth.” Twenty years removed from the initial event, that case, like all the other allegations against the late entertainer, continues to reside in that shadowy realm. Yet the messy circumstances surrounding exposure of the allegations do not argue totally against the claims’ dismissal. If the sex-abuse cases that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church teach anything, it is that the word of revered persons or institutions cannot be accepted strictly on faith—even if the individual happens to be, as Hampton Stevens wrote in an arresting (if somewhat hyperbolic) Atlantic article, the “first great televisual entertainer.”